First the Lost Dutchman's Goldmine attacked us, *Then excessively watered the cactus. **...Now I find with dismay...That an Apple a dayKeeps the Doctor away from his practice ! ***

* One of the early text-only adventure games. Like Zork.** If you did anything but the right thing all you saw was a saguaro cactus*** Remember when there were no Macintosh computers, just an Apple II ?

(I won $10 once for submitting that to an early computer magazine, in 1983 or so. That's the same as Second Prize in a Beauty Contest !)

The medieval peoples for Heaven did searchIn transept cathedrals the heathens did worshBuilding their churches crossed shapedAs vehicles where souls could translate Now every airplane flying is a cross shaped church

The unity of triploid feet helps weld the thing together, but the variation in stress patterns makes for more interest. This gives the characteristic declamatory inversion of normal speech rhythm in the first line ~ “There WAS an/old MAN of/deVIZes….” The alteration to anapaest in the middle couplet has something of the same kind of effect that a couplet does in a 14 line sonnet, but sprung into the humorous conclusion of the final line with both rhythmic stress and final rhyme striking conclusively as a closing bell (apart from variation for more humorous effect!)

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